Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Speaking of Sports

(University of Michigan football coach) Brady Hoke likely will be getting a new title: J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach. The Harris family is donating $10 million to endow the position and make it the first such position among U-M coaches, assuming the Board of Regents approve it at this week’s meeting, taking effect March 1.

Don't be aghast. The article goes on to report:

Other schools have done similar endowments and naming: Stanford with the head football coach and offensive coordinator as endowed positions, Boston College with the head football coach, Yale with men’s and women’s basketball and women’s lacrosse, and nearly every coaching position at Harvard. Even Lafayette (Pa.) has its football coach position endowed.

How can a judge know whether Skater A is artistically evocative than Skater B, when Skater A is wearing a simple white dress and Skater B looks like she’s wearing a sparkly avian fetus? One answer to the call for objectivity is that it’s time for the Olympics and the world governing bodies of skating to try something new—like a standardized dress code....

Each skater could be required to wear the same simple attire, perhaps for example, a black dress or black pants and black shirt for women, and black pants with a black shirt for men. It would be, in essence, a control variable.

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Speaking of figure skating....next level, please. The men are doing quadruple spin jumps -- almost unimaginably difficult -- but...yawn. Seen it. And seen it. And seen it.The interest is in which competitor is going to fall down and what the bobbles are going to cost in the eyes of the judges.

Where's the aerial artistry and daredevil creativity we see in snowboarding and skiing? Or even gymnastic floor exercise?

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And where's the drama in bobsled anymore? I seem to remember as a kid watching bobsled races on "ABC's Wide World of Sports" and seeing lots of hairy wipeouts on tight turns. Not that I want to see anyone hurt or anything, but watching skeleton, luge and the varoius bobsled events is a tedious exercise in clock watching.

It's obviously difficult to steer these contraptions, but it's not obvious how difficult it is or even why it's that difficult. Unlike, say, downhill skiing, where strength and coordination requirements are plain to see.

And there's the additional issue of the addition of athletes from other sports -- U.S. sprinter Lolo Jones is the latest -- quickly becoming Olympic caliber. Rick Morrissey:

In November 2012, Jones and pilot Jazmine Fenlator won silver in a World Cup race in Lake Placid, N.Y. How long had Jones been involved in the sport? Five weeks.

In what other sport could even a stellar athlete become world-class in five weeks?

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Snowboard Cross is a relatively new Winter Olympic event, but I think it's become the quintessential event --a pure "race ya' to the bottom!" contest that doesn't require a stopwatch or judges. Short-track speed skating has a similar quality, but the challenge is different, less varied and, to me, duller. Not that I would watch it more than once every four years, but it gets my gold for the winter games.

Admittedly, the cross-country skiing events have a similar purity -- they probably got their start with a "I'll race ya' from Homenkollen to Kongsvinger!" challenge -- but with so few wipeouts, the races can't hold my interest.

Can we just eliminate figure skating as a sport? It's not a sport. It's a hobby. Sure, it absolutely requires athleticism, but so does ballet, and it's not in the Olympics. Anytime a sport requires judges instead of clocks or finish lines or scoreboards to determine a winner, I immediately lose interest. The winners of sporting contests should be objective, not subjective. Otherwise, it's just a hobby.

Not to mention, is there anything hokier on earth than figure skating? Yes, I can understand that it's extremely difficult and the moves the skaters are pulling off take years and years of practice to perfect. But prancing on ice in gaudy costumes to cliche, outdated music is about the lamest thing I can imagine.

tb, I'm right there with you if we want to eliminate any athletic activity in the Olympics that relies on subjective scoring. See ya, figure skating, gymnastics, boxing, dressage and so on and so forth.

Why is NBC giving SO much more airtime to Gracie Gold than to Ashley Wagner? Both have the "whole package" from a TV/marketing standpoint. Is it just the name, or is Gold that much better than Wagner as a skater?

As for the Brady Hoke Endowment - based on your earlier reporting about Hoke and his players, as an alum I'm still disgusted at Hoke's apparent selective blindness vis-a-vis player behavior.

J Finn - I'm all for getting rid of all of those, gymnastics being the only possible controversial call (perhaps boxing, too, as it could conceivably end in a knockout, even though Olympic bouts rarely do).

I guess my distaste for figure skating stems from the fact that it's subjectively scored AND utterly ridiculous.

The only sport in the winter Olympics that I have utterly no interest in is hockey, Whenever the telecasts go to hockey, or report on hockey, I find something else to do, pick up the journal I was reading, raid the fridge, anything.

I am disappointed how NBC has been ignoring in Prime TIme the biggest story of these Olympic Games, that is the incredible achievement of the Dutch speedskaters, who have swept four events, and set new records for medaling in one sport in one Olympics.

At 27-25, the Bulls have the opportunity to inch within a half-game of third place in the (admittedly pathetic) Eastern Conference with a win over Toronto. This team has no right to be above .500, no right to be in the playoff picture, and certainly no right to be within striking distance of a three seed. Considering the loss of both Rose and Deng, the Bulls should have a much lower ceiling than they do. I know the NBA doesn't like to give out multiple Coach of the Year awards to the same guy (Phil Jackson only won once) but Tom Thibodeau has to be the front runner for that particular piece of hardware. To paraphrase the man himself, the Bulls' fortunes were going the other way in December, and their turnaround has been something to see.

In all honesty, though, I can only get so excited about the 2013-14 Bulls. This season was supposed to be about the return of Derrick Rose and, if not a championship, at least a big step in that direction. (My expectation was for nothing less than a six-game series loss to Miami in the Eastern Conference Finals.) So even though the Bulls have been fun to watch, and much better than I expected once the injuries and trades started mounting, their season has still been something of a letdown.

The big problem with the Winter Olympics is that so many of the events are just variations on a theme. You have one person on a sled and two persons and finally four persons going on the bobsled course. Ditto for the skiing events which ask us to consider how many different ways one person can go down a hill on a pair of skis. After awhile, who cares?

There's also the lack of real one on one competition. Almost all of the sports have one contestant or team compete at a time. That's why Snowboard Cross is so exciting since the best go head to head against each other at the same time. And unlike short skating, you don't have the games that teams (yes - South Korea - I mean YOU!) can play to hose competitors from other nations. With the other events, the order in which you compete can make all the difference and that just seems screwy to me.

One other thing the Winter Olympics have going against them is the venue. It is ridiculous to have winter sports in areas where the temps can rise into the sixties. I recall during one competition yesterday they had snow, rain, ice, sleet and fog to contend with. Again, that skews the results and what fun is it to watch that?

There's also the commercials that get run into the ground. After how Shani Davis hosed up big time, I think of that whenever I see him racing on skates to get to the plane on time in that United commercial. And, that one McDonald's commercial which shows him with a gold medal in his teeth takes the cake. When someone has an epic fail like Shani, dump his commercials.

People should not be surprised that the ratings have continued to drop. For the most part, the games have been a bore.

One other thing - I don't find it inspirational when people spend most of their lives preparing for an event to get a shiny medal. Use that kind of drive and determination to do something which makes a real and positive difference in the world instead of being a footnote in record books. Let's be honest - with a very few exceptions, no one will remember what these people did even a few weeks after the games are over let along years from now.

I think you're selling the Bulls a little bit short and this is coming from someone who isn't a Bulls fan. Noah is a very good player, Taj and Butler are coming into their own, Augustin is having a career year, Boozer is still better than most big men, and Dunleavy and Hinrich give you quality depth. That's a pretty solid team especially with Thibodeau coaching.

You need a core for the future. Rose without a good supporting cast is not going to work. Point guards can not carry teams. Some of the greatest point guards in the game from Oscar Robertson (the best ever, in my opinion) to John Stockton to Gary Payton to Jason Kidd couldn't win championships without a lot of talent around them. Contrast that with what some big men have been able to do with less surrounding talent.

It's almost a positive that the Bulls don't have Rose around as a crutch when the shot clock is running down. Having Rose go one-on-one at the end of possessions doesn't work in the playoffs. Maybe they grab the three seed, make a nice little run, and develop another go-to guy who can complement Rose when he gets back. That's the scenario you should be rooting for right now.

In what other sport could even a stellar athlete become world-class in five weeks?
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Trying to think of another set of sports where the skill is so narrow.
She's a track athlete whose skill translates to pushing a sled...wow

The choice of the Russians of Sochi has long been widely criticized, because the country has more cold winter spots than any other country in the world, yet they chose a location that tends to warm temperatures. So far it has been manageable, but had there been no snow in the weeks preceding the Olympics it would have been a disaster.

Regarding the winter sports being boring....well, different strokes for different folks. I find them fascinating, and even more so now that I have On Demand feature that I can see events that NBC ignores because they do not have American competitors.

Figure skating has been denounced by some on this post as not being a sport. I think it is almost impossible to define "sport" so as not to exclude "sports" that should be included. I think it is a sport, and I appreciate it just as I do rhythmic gymnastics and syncronized swim.

-- Actually I think I misinterpreted your point about bobsledding...I can't bring myself to read anything by morrissey but I assume the point is in bobsledding it's relatively easy to bring a track athlete to world class bobsledding (see willie gault, Herschel walker)

@Greg J: I'm pleasantly surprised, that's for sure. The Bulls are apparently very high on Nikola Mirotić. If they can bring him in next year, the future could be bright with a nucleus of Rose, Noah, Mirotić, Gibson, Butler, Snell, and two picks from this year's draft (they have the rights to Charlotte's pick).

Another question is whether they bring Deng back as he's not happy in Cleveland (who is?). I'd lean towards no, at least at his likely price tag, but we'll see. This year's draft should be deep so that's promising too.

I'm a big NBA fan but not a Bulls fan (I root for the Wizards, the team that preceded the Bulls in Chicago, coincidentally) so I forgot about Mirotic and Snell. I like where the franchise is going and we may be headed for some good Bulls-Wizards playoff battles if both teams stay on track.

@quotidian: As if a defensive lineman wouldn't happily accept a roughing the passer penalty to knock a quarterback out of the game, as if Harry Chiti was never traded for himself, and as if the same number of teams don't qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs as qualify for the NBA playoffs.

But as long as we're talking basketball...this should appeal to everyone who dogs on the NBA because it "spoils the purity of the sport." Whitney Young will square off against Curie for the Public League Championship tomorrow night (Chicago State University, 7:00pm). Young (my alma mater) boasts the no. 1 high school basketball player in the country in Jahlil Okafor, while Curie (my neighborhood school) boasts the no. 3 high school basketball player in the country in Cliff Alexander. Should be a doozy.

Well...Young vs. Curie did not disappoint. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to see the game in person, but I just finished watching it on my DVR. I already knew the (for me, disappointing) outcome, but that didn't lessen my enjoyment as much as I thought it would. I'm used to watching sports live, when the outcome is still in doubt, so I thought knowing the winner of Friday's quadruple-overtime contest would make for anticlimactic viewing. That wasn't the case. If anything, I was able to appreciate the good plays - and there were plenty - in a different light since I wasn't overestimating (or underestimating) their import. Was there some sloppy play? Sure, and that's to be expected in a high school game, but there was also a lot to admire (although Curie's ball control strategy in each of the overtime periods was tiresome). I was especially impressed with Cliff Alexander, who has a lot of speed and athleticism for someone of his size. I wouldn't be surprised to see him go on to bigger and better things.

About "Change of Subject."

"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune op-ed columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.
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Contributing editor Jessica Reynolds is a 2012 graduate of Loyola University Chicago and is the coordinator of the Tribune's editorial board. She can be reached at jreynolds at tribune.com.